Mike and Helen traveled to Guatemala to work with Stove Team

The tradition of a mother carrying a child on her chest or back while cooking over a 3 stone fire is changing – but not fast enough. 

 

A family of eight lives in one room with a dirt floor and corrugated steel walls without water or toilet.  The care-worn faces of these indigenous Guatemalans wear smiles in anticipation.  In one or two days they will receive a stove provided by Stove Team.

 

The stoves provide a significant improvement in the quality of life – the wood burns much more efficiently in a combustion chamber. A lot less particulate matter is released into air breathed by the woman and her child.  The cooking surface is elevated to allow cooking from a standing position.

 

Stove Team, a non-profit started by Rotarian Nancy Hughes, has worked for more than 8 years to establish stove-producing factories in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.  Local entrepreneurs own and operate the factories and use locally available materials to build them.  Since its beginning Stove Team has provided for the manufacture and delivery of over 60,000 stoves. Because the stoves burn wood more efficiently, less firewood needs to be hauled or purchased.

 

Stove Team works with other non-profits to improve the design and test the stoves, both in controlled settings and in homes.  Village women wear instruments to measure the amount of particulate matter released into the air being breathed by the woman and her child. 

 

In January, 2017, club members Helen Hankins and Mike Mauser traveled to Antigua, Guatemala where they joined 16 other people to work at a factory producing stoves. They also visited some of the homes and met members of the families who would be receiving stoves. On their last day, they helped distribute the stoves.

 

For more information visit: http://www.stoveteam.org/